Herbert List was a German photographer, who worked for magazines, including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Life, and was associated with Magnum Photos. He traveled regularly between Greece, Italy, and Paris until the outbreak of World War II, when he settled …
If it seems like today’s kids have gotten “softer” compared to the kids decades ago, perhaps it’s because playgrounds have gotten softer as well. Thanks to state laws and personal injury lawyers, the landscape of the typical playground has changed a lot…
Conveying the officials in the photograph is a section of 30ft diameter steel penstock of the soon-to-be-completed Hoover Dam. In the same year, the pouring of the project's concrete had concluded - a total of 3.25million cubic yards. As the United Stat…
Leonard Siffleet, an Australian commando during World War II, served in the M Special Unit of the Services Reconnaissance Department. While on a mission in Papua New Guinea, he was captured by partisan tribesmen along with two Ambonese companions. They w…
This extraordinary picture taken in 1948 by David Seymour, one of Magnum Photos’ co-founders, has since been seen by millions. First, it was published in LIFE magazine where the caption read in part “Children’s wounds are not all outward. Those made in …
The Solvay Conference, founded by the Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay in 1912, was considered a turning point in the world of physics. Located in Brussels, the conferences were devoted to outstanding preeminent open problems in both physics and chem…
RareHistoricalPhotos.com is a website/blog exclusively dedicated to historical and rare photographs. Each historical photograph has a story to tell, each of them documents a major event in human history, each photo is a way to grasp the full meaning of the pas…
Mankind's road to the stars had its unsung heroes. One of them was the Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. His spaceflight on Soyuz 1 made him the first Soviet cosmonaut to fly into outer space more than once, and he became the first human to die on a sp…
Navy chaplain Luis Padilla gives last rites to a soldier wounded by sniper fire during a revolt in Venezuela. Braving the streets amid sniper fire, to offer last rites to the dying, the priest encountered a wounded soldier, who pulled himself up by clin…
On a hot August night in 1930, a crowd gathered in front of an Indiana jail — men, women, and children shouting and jeering, demanding that the sheriff release his three prisoners. Three African-American teenagers: Tom Shipp, Abe Smith, and James Camero…
A dramatic overhead shot by Neil Leifer, generally regarded as one of the greatest sporting images of all time, features the prostrate form of Cleveland Williams while Muhammad Ali strikes a victory pose during a knockdown in their 1966 title fight. As …
According to Chapman he actually had the gun in his pocket when this photo was taken, but he chickened out. He hung around in front of the Dakota getting his nerves up until John and Yoko came home later that night. Chapman waited outside Lennon's apart…
With the permission of the Chilean government in 1889, eleven Selk'nam natives including an 8-year-old were taken to Europe to be exhibited in Human Zoos. The Patagonian Indians were a rarity. Between 1878 and 1900, three groups of natives belonging to …
Adolf Eichmann was a German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. Because of his organizational talents and ideological reliability, Eichmann was charged by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydr…